incredibly
short time, and it springs at an object with great force. Mr. Gould was a
little in advance of his party, when suddenly a native who was with him
screamed out, "Oh, massa! dere big snake!" Mr. Gould started, and putting
his foot in a hole, nearly fell to the ground. At that instant the snake
made its spring, and had it not been for his stumble, would have struck
him in the face; as it was, it passed over his head, and was shot before
it could do any further mischief. It was a large snake, of the most
venomous sort, and the natives gathered round the sportsman anxiously
inquiring if it had bitten him? Finding it had not, all said they thought
he was "good for dead," when they saw the reptile spring.

The expression "sting," used repeatedly by Shakspeare, as applied to
snakes, is altogether incorrect; the tongue has nothing to do with the
infliction of injury. Serpents bite, and the difference between the
harmless and venomous serpents generally is simply this: the mouths of the
harmless snakes and the whole tribe of boas are provided with sharp teeth,
but no fangs; their bite, therefore, is innocuous; the poisonous serpents
on the other hand, have two poison-fangs attached to the upper jaw which
lie flat upon the roof of the mouth when not in use, and are concealed by
a fold of the skin. In each fang is a tube which opens near the point of
the tooth by a fissure; when the creature is irritated the fangs are at
once erected. The poison bag is placed beneath the muscles which act on
the lower jaw, so that when the fangs are struck into the victim the
poison is injected with much force to the very bottom of the wound.

But how do Boa Constrictors swallow goats and antelopes, and other large
animals whole? The process is very simple; the lower jaw is not united to
the upper, but is hung to a long stalk-shaped bone, on which it is
movable, and this bone is only attached to the skull by ligaments,
susceptible of extraordinary extension. The process by which these
serpents take and swallow their prey has been so graphically described in
the second volume of the "Zoological Journal," by that very able
naturalist and graceful writer, W. J. Broderip, Esq., F.R.S., that we
shall transcribe it, being able, from frequent ocular demonstrations, to
vouch for its correctness. A large buck rabbit was introduced into the
cage of a Boa Constrictor of great size: "The snake was down and
motionless in a moment. There he lay like